Steam Community :: Guide :: How to add custom backgrounds, icons, custom game boxart and cartridge/disks instead of screenshots for playlists for XMB

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How to add custom backgrounds, icons, custom game boxart and cartridge/disks instead of screenshots for playlists for XMB

By ↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect

I will show how to customize the XMB backgrounds and icons and how to add your own custom boxart and the cartridges/disks for the games in your playlists.

This will work for the Steam version and the Standalone version. This guide is for version 1.21.0 of RetroArch.

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Created by

↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect
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Category: Modding or Configuration, Secrets, Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

28 May @ 2:37am

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Guide Index

Overview

How to turn on the XMB driver and enable dynamic backgrounds and icon set.

Location for playlists backgrounds and how to use them.

Location for playlists console icons and how to change them.

Location for your game list icons, the ones in front of your games.

Location for your boxart and how to change them.

Location for your screenshots and how to change them to the cartridge and disk pictures.

Files for the boxart/disks

Backup your hard work.

Comments

How to turn on the XMB driver and enable dynamic backgrounds and icon set.

Launch retroarch then go to SETTINGS>USER INTERFACE.
Scroll all the way to the bottom and look for Menu.
Click on it and then click on XMB. Restart Retroarch.

Then go back to SETTINGS>USER INTERFACE>APPEARANCE.
On the appearance menu look for Icon Theme and make sure to put it on Monochrome.
If it is already set to that then you can proceed with the rest of the guide.

While still on the appearance menu look for Dynamic Background and turn it on.

Then while on that menu still look for Primary Thumbnail and set it to Boxart.
Then right below that is Secondary Thumbnail turn that to Screenshot.

Location for playlists backgrounds and how to use them.

Navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\RetroArch\assets\wallpapers or where ever you have Retroarch installed. The wallpapers has to be the exact same name as your playlists. So if your playlist is named Sega - Genesis then your wallpaper will also need to be named Sega - Genesis. The wallpapers will go in this folder.

Note: The wallpaper size is 2560x1440. If you set Retroarch to use the same resolution the icons will line up with the background lines. Putting it to a higher or lower resolution and the icons will be off. More sizes coming soon.

Here is what my wallpaper folder looks like.

Here is the backgrounds that i have for the following systems.
Atari 2600
MAME
GB
GBC
GBA
GameCube
N64
NES
SNES
WII
Sega 32x
Dreamcast
Sega CD
Genesis
Game Gear
Master System
Saturn
Playstation
Playstation 2

Here is a google drive link to my wallpapers.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jqSAtB12UytS8Qwqu27vCnS8rJ8ez7GR?usp=sharing

Location for playlists console icons and how to change them.

Navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\RetroArch\assets\xmb\monochrome\png .
This is where the custom icons for the consoles go. I already named them the correct way so all you have to do is copy and overwrite the originals.

(Warning for standalone or for people who copied over the standalone to the steam version to get the online updater. If you go into the updater in Retroarch and click on assets your custom icons will be overwritten with the originals. So be careful not to click on it and redownload the assets or your custom icons will be lost.)

Here is the console icons i made. They are the original images of the consoles that i made to work within retroarch's size constraints. They look nice on my screen which is a ultra wide screen with a native 3440x1440 21:9 but running retroarch at 2560x1440.

Here is a google drive link to my console icons.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jVqn4Wk9D5gOAHkxbiDWBT-LJRVZwVEr?usp=sharing

Location for your game list icons, the ones in front of your games.

Navigate to M:\Steam\steamapps\common\RetroArch\assets\xmb\monochrome\png .
This is where the custom icons for your games go. The one in front of your games name. I already named them the correct way so all you have to do is copy and overwrite the originals.

Here is the custom game list icons i made. I used photoshop psd files of the game cartridges and disks. These are the gold n64 cartridge icons in the picture below.

Here is a google drive link to my game list icons.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EhbJys6fmAzJc6-MBSn4FioUvOwEIwrw?usp=sharing

Location for your boxart and how to change them.

Navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\RetroArch\thumbnails.
Here you should see a folder for every playlist you have, the folder will have your playlist name.
There should already be boxart in this folder if you let retroarch download them files for your games.
Using my Atari 2600 playlist i have a folder in thumbnails named Atari 2600.
Inside this folder is 3 other folders named Named_Boxarts, Named_Snaps and Named_Titles.
For the purpose of this guides section we will only be using the folder named Named_Boxarts.

Here is where it gets a little tedious.
As some of the boxart names in the downloads below do not match the ones they are replacing.
You will have to match the name of the boxart in the Named_Boxarts folder.

For example lets take the game Pac-Man. The boxart in the folder Named_Boxarts has Pac-man named like this Pac-Man (USA).
While the 3d boxart for pac-man is named Pac-Man. So you will have to rename it to Pac-Man (USA).
Then copy it over and replacing the file in the Named_Boxarts folder in Retroarch.

For the boxarts and the cartridges/disks look below for the Files Section of this guide. Since there is a lot of links and each system has it's own link i put the boxart and the cartridges/disks images in the same folder. So like Atari got a box art folder and cartridge folder.

Location for your screenshots and how to change them to the cartridge and disk pictures.

Navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\RetroArch\thumbnails.
Here you should see a folder for every playlist you have, the folder will have your playlist name.
There should already be screenshots in this folder if you let retroarch download them files for your games.
Using my Atari 2600 playlist i have a folder in thumbnails named Atari 2600.
Inside this folder is 3 other folders named Named_Boxarts, Named_Snaps and Named_Titles.
For the purpose of this guides section we will only be using the folder named Named_Snaps.

Here is where it gets a little tedious.
As some of the cartridges/disks names in the downloads below do not match the ones they are replacing.
You will have to match the name of the screenshot in the Named_Snaps folder.

For example lets take the game Pac-Man. The cartridge in the folder Named_Snaps has Pac-man named like this Pac-Man (USA).
While the cartridge for pac-man is named Pac-Man (Atari) (USA). So you will have to rename it to Pac-Man (USA).
Then copy it over and replacing the file in the Named_Snaps folder in Retroarch.

Files for the boxart/disks

Backup your hard work.

After you customize everything backup the assets folder and the thumbnails folder so that if in case you do click on the assets.zip in the retroarch updater your hard work won't be lost. I used a zip program like 7zip to back them up. You can just copy (do not cut) them to another location for safe keeping. That way when retroarch updates via steam or you copy over the standalone and forget and copy over the assets and thumbnail folders your hard work won't be gone cause you have a backup. Then just copy over your backup and your retroarch is back to the way you customized it.

2 Comments

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↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect [author] 29 May @ 9:27pm

Glad you enjoyed it.

💞 lilmama 💞 29 May @ 7:28pm

This is a great, simple guide. Thank you, I appreciate it.

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